


Tangrams

by nonelvis



Series: Across the Universe [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 05:10:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonelvis/pseuds/nonelvis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River Song unexpectedly arrives on Pete's World. What could possibly go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The third story in my [Across the Universe](http://archiveofourown.org/series/16466) series, but as with the other stories in that series, this one stands alone, and there's no need to read the others to follow along. The story is complete and will be posted over the course of this week. Huge thanks to for helping the story make any sense at all outside of my head.

"Priority prisoner for you, Doctor," said the voice on the other end of the line.

"Do you have to call them 'prisoners,' Sanjay?" the Doctor said. "Can't we call them, I don't know, 'guests' or 'visitors' or maybe even 'friends we haven't met yet'?"

"My orders are to keep an eye out for alien incursions, assume possible hostile intent, and to keep them under lock and key if necessary. 'Prisoners' covers it, don't you think?"

"I have got to talk to Pete about those orders."

"You do that. In the meantime, I'll keep rounding up unexpected … visitors."

"That's more like it, Sanjay. Now, what's this one like?"

"Looks human enough. James from the Sevens rang us, said a woman appeared out of nowhere while he was cleaning the taps – and before you say anything, he meant 'appeared.' Said he heard a popping noise and saw her appear a metre off the bar, then hit the floor. She got up, ordered a double MacAllen 17-year –"

"At least she's got good taste."

"But no money, or not any from Earth. James said her coins winked at him. That's when he rang us. Lawrence and Siobhan tried the gentle approach first, but she wasn't so interested in that. It took six of my people to bring her down, and that was after she blew a perfectly square hole in the wall."

The squareness gun. The Doctor remembered where he'd last seen that: wielded by a woman who'd died for him. This was either her doppelganger, or the woman hadn't met him yet, at least not in her own universe.

This had to be her doppelganger. It had to be.

And yet, his lone heart thumped loud and fast. 

"Sanjay, can you send me a photo of her?"

"Doing it now, Doctor."

It was a standard Torchwood mugshot: head from front and both sides; full-length portrait; results of initial body scan, which indicated human with possible genetic anomalies. In the full-length shot, the woman blew the camera a kiss.

"Sanjay," he said, focusing on keeping his breathing even and unsuspicious, "I'll be down to speak with this one shortly. And Sanjay – you haven't rung Rose about her yet, have you?"

"No, I haven't. She was next on my list."

"Don't worry about it. I'll tell her myself. And in the meantime, if she wanders by, don't let her speak to the prisoner without me being there."

"This is most irregular, Doctor."

"I know, I know, and I'm sorry about that. But I may know this woman … and Rose doesn't, if you catch my meaning."

There was a short chuckle on the line. "I very much do. All right. I'll leave it to you for now. But not forever, yes? I have protocols to observe, and the director will have my head if I don't follow them."

"You let me deal with Pete," the Doctor said, and rang off.

 _And Rose,_ he thought.

* * *

River lay on her back in the cell, arms folded beneath her head. For a woman who'd wrestled with six Torchwood officers before capture, she seemed both serene and uninjured.

"Seven hundred forty-two," she said.

"Seven hundred forty-two what?"

"Seven hundred forty-two dots in the upper right quadrant of the ceiling before you came to see me." River rose, sauntered over to the plexiglass window separating her from the Doctor. "Hello, Doctor. Lovely to meet you."

"You know my name."

"I certainly do." That knowing smile he remembered from the Library: captivating, infuriating, seductive.

"How?"

She pulled a familiar blue diary from her jacket. "The guards thought this was just a book. They're right, of course, but they've no idea what kind of book it is. You're right here in my spotter's guide."

How had that stupid human heart of his gone so loud? This had never happened when he'd had two proper Time Lord hearts. "You can't – I'm not from …"

A soft chuckle. "You think I'm from this universe? No, sweetie, I'm as unique as you are."

He crossed his arms over his chest. "How did you get here, River?"

"I'd like to know that myself," she said. "And I'd also like to know how you know my name."

"Well," he said. "Spoilers."

* * *

The Doctor signed out River's property bag and took it back to his office. The guards had let her keep the seemingly harmless diary, but had confiscated the squareness gun; two lipsticks scented suspiciously of a known hallucinogen; 12 _jeels_ in Lobellia's interactive, winking currency; a pair of interlocked handcuffs; and a misbehaving vortex manipulator that arced static electricity when the Doctor touched its cracked case. He sniffed it, noting ozone and metal, and tentatively touched his tongue to its surface.

His head snapped back with a rush of timeline fragments, most with faces he didn't recognise, except for the few he knew were his own, which occasionally fell into the first category as well. One in particular seemed quite taken with River: a floppy-haired youngster with a bow tie.

The vortex manipulator dropped to the desk with a thump, spinning briefly before wobbling to a stop. He was never supposed to see his own future, and even though the splinters currently burrowing into his head hardly formed a complete frame, they were more than enough to know that his suspicions about River back in the Library had been well-founded.

He did know her, not always as well as she'd said he did, but now and then in the roundabout nature of time travel relationships. He'd seen her in his previous incarnations, too, incarnations that hadn't had those memories before he'd been budded from his own hand.

And he and River, they were ... _close._ Close enough that that the thought of Rose's reaction to the news shivered through him like the polar wind.

He tried to shake it off and concentrate on the vortex manipulator. How had River broken through universes, anyway, and was that method reproducible? How would she travel back? Because surely she did find her way back, unless she'd miraculously survived her vaporisation in the core of the Library, and this was some future River … no, no, that couldn't be it, because she'd been surprised he recognised her, which meant she hadn't met his tenth self yet … unless she was lying, because she'd said she lied all the time … and quite frankly, the more he thought about how she'd deliberately and accidentally entangled herself with his timelines, the more even his half-Time Lord head hurt.

He aimed his sonic at the vortex manipulator's case, gently levitating its screws anticlockwise until the frame jiggled loose. One thing at a time; one simple, easy question: could he fix it? Probably, once he sorted out how this model worked; they were all of a piece, these little time-travel jalopies, and nowhere near as intricate as the sort of temporal equipment he'd been holding together with duct tape and sweet words for hundreds of years.

Had once held together. Hadn't been for 576.23 days, not that he was counting.

He put down the sonic and rubbed his eyes. It still stabbed at him, not having the TARDIS, like the dull throb of an old injury, healed over but never fully right again. She was somewhere on the other side of that supposedly unbreachable wall River had managed to breach anyway, not that whatever hole she'd punched through the Void was large enough for him to hear his ship's song. She was still further away than the most distant star.

Except here, in his hands, was the awl River had used to punch that hole; the tool he needed to repair so she could return. He'd once tuned a vortex manipulator to transport three people five billion years and as many miles to Earth, but could he do the same across universes?

And more to the point, should he?

Outside his window, the London skyline spread in a vanishing point towards the horizon. The sky was unusually blue today, though in the distance, he could see a smudge of grey, an afternoon thunderstorm approaching. If he left now, he could catch a flight before the storm hit: Hong Kong, Kiev, Islamabad, Cape Town. Close his eyes, spin about the terminal, walk to whichever counter his finger pointed to, slap down his passport and ask for a ticket for the next international flight anywhere. It was as close as he could get to randomness now.

Sometimes he took Rose. Sometimes he didn't. He'd taken short trips all the time while his companions slept, or when he'd been companionless, and occasionally needed to feel the scorching desert wind or the chill of an icy mountain for himself, another secret to lock away in his mind and share only when he had to.

Rose was less sympathetic about those needs than he'd hoped. He supposed she had a point: they had one limited human life to share together, and those words – "share" and "together" – mattered to both of them. But Heathrow still called.

The Doctor got up and drew the shade. The room dimmed, but he didn't need much light anyway. He picked up the sonic and got back to work.

* * *

"What is it?" Rose said. "Heard there's a new arrival at intake. Baker says they nicked her at the pub, if you can believe that. We should have just met her there for a pint."

"I don't think you need to bother with this one," the Doctor said. "She sounds harmless enough."

"You know we have to talk to anyone Sanjay's team brings in."

"Well, there's 'have to,' and there's _'have to,'_ isn't there? And this one seems more of a 'not worth it.' Trust me, I've spoken with her already."

"Oh, you have, have you?" Rose seated herself, crossed both arms and legs. "And what exactly did you learn from Miss Not Worth It?"

"She's just an archaeologist," the Doctor said weakly, shuffling papers on his desk that were either in the wrong order or about to be. "I'm sure she doesn't mean Earth any harm."

Rose leaned in towards him. "So, how do you know her?"

"What kind of a question is that?"

"So you don't know her?"

"I didn't say that."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Go on."

He smoothed down his paperwork and placed his palms flat on the desktop. "I only met her once. On the other side, that is. When I was him, you know, not me. She seemed to know me ... very well, but I didn't know her. Time travel, and all that." He took a breath. "I saw her die, Rose. She doesn't know that. She can't know that."

"You know I'd never tell her. But what do you mean, she knew you 'very well'?"

"That's the thing, Rose. I'd never met her before, but she knew things about me, things I've never told anyone else."

"Not even me?"

He tapped his fingers on the desk, an agitated rhythm. "No. Not even you. The sort of thing that I could only tell someone if things had got about as bad as they could possibly be, only much, much worse than that."

She laughed. "Worse than anything you and I have seen?"

"Yes," he said, and watched Rose's face fall. "Just leave it, Rose. Leave her. You'll only end up fighting anyway, and I hate the idea of the two of you fighting. I'm working out a way to get her home. I should be done soon, and then we can all forget about this."

"Fighting. With some woman I've never even met."

"Please, Rose. For me. Leave it."

She pushed back her chair, stood up, and sighed. "Maybe. I've got loads of paperwork this afternoon anyway."

"Thank you."

"You're not getting out of things that easily, mister," she said, leaning in to kiss him on the forehead. "But we can talk about it later."

"Yes," he said, and his hands stilled. "Later, yes."

* * *

The damaged vortex manipulator gave up its secrets slowly. Either River or someone else had heavily modified it, the equivalent of adding a sports suspension and racing tyres to that old jalopy. The Doctor had determined that a chronon particle leak dribbling from the casing was probably responsible for River bursting through the void, but what had caused the leak, much less how to reconfigure the manipulator to send River – or anyone else, for that matter – back to the other universe remained a mystery.

The case was largely hexayoonium tetraoxide, a fair substitute for the monoyoonium the Doctor preferred for his most sensitive time travel components, and one that indicated the person who'd modified the manipulator had reasonable expertise. Neither material was available on Earth, and the Doctor steadied his aim with the sonic, delicately unthreading ridged dowels and screws until he could examine the circuitry concealed within the device.

Three alligator clips, a small transformer, and a voided warranty later, the Doctor had the vortex manipulator's circuit board hooked up to a diagnostics app on his tablet. The app was in no way configured to deal with circuitry this advanced, at least by default, but what a genius could do with it was an entirely different matter. Subroutine after subroutine scrolled by on his screen, each no more interesting than any other – coordinate libraries, universal location system transponder code, temporal displacement tables, all the ordinary foundation layers of any decent time travel software – except for one routine, completely uncommented and staggered with irregular white space, whose primary function call was "fastReturnSwitch."

Each part of the function called a locator subroutine, which was then passed an extraordinarily long string of numbers and letters; the sort of effective but inefficient programming technique amateurs used when they didn't know how to create and store arrays elsewhere. But there were patterns, sequences that repeated from string to string, though sometimes with minor shifts, like a mutated gene. He drummed his fingers on the table and stared at the tablet, waiting for the pattern to shift into place.

It didn't, but even if it had been about to, the trilling of his office phone broke his concentration.

"Yes?" he snapped.

"Doctor, it's Sanjay. I think you should come down here."

"I'm a bit busy at the moment."

"So is Rose."

The Doctor sat straight up in his seat. "What?"

"I came back from break and she was here – Leo must have let her in while I was out. I don't know how long they've been talking, but Rose brought in a chair. I think she means to be here for some time."

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'll be right there, Sanjay."

"I thought you might."

* * *

Detention was two floors below ground level, and the Doctor's office fourteen floors above that, but even so, he ran down the stairs rather than waiting for the lift. He arrived at Sanjay's station nearly out of breath.

The black and white monitor on Sanjay's desk showed Rose, arms and legs crossed defensively, barely inches from the plexiglass barrier to River's cell.

"He didn't want me to talk to you," said Rose. "He said we'd just end up fighting." 

"Over him, I suppose? That man and his ego. It just doesn't quit."

"Yeah, well, he's not wrong about this." Rose leaned forward in her chair. "Who are you, River?"

"Just a traveller with a taste for adventure, like you."

"That's not all you've got a taste for, is it?"

River smiled. "I must say, I never expected to add the metacrisis to my life list. But I never expected to end up in this universe in the first place, either."

The Doctor wiped his face with his hand. He'd been red-faced and warm when he arrived; now a chill settled at his spine. "Sanjay," he said, "why am I still on this side of the door and not the other one?"

"Just a moment." Sanjay swung away from his desk and over to a set of controls by the door, where he paused for a retina scan and then entered a seven-digit sequence. There was a set of low thumps and clicks, and the door slowly swung open. The Doctor bruised his shoulder slipping through.

"You shouldn't be here, River," he said. "That vortex manipulator of yours was leaking chronon particles. You're lucky it dropped you here instead of scattering your atoms halfway across the galaxy."

"I've always been a lucky woman," River said.

"Rose," the Doctor said tightly, "I thought I asked you not to speak with her."

"Gorgeous mystery woman shows up, you and she've got history you've never mentioned to me, and you think I'm going to ignore that?"

"'Gorgeous'? Why, thank you, dear," said River.

The Doctor rubbed his eyes. "I'm just trying to keep things as quiet and simple as possible until I can find River a way home."

"Quiet and simple," Rose said. "By telling me not to talk to her. Because that's going to work." A weary laugh. "Look, I'm just checking on her. Making sure she's not planning anything."

"If you'd like me to plan something," River called helpfully from her cell, "I've got loads of ideas about how to pass the time."

"Time to go, Rose," the Doctor said, sighing. He reached for her arm, and though she glared at him, she got up and pushed the chair aside.

"You and me, we're not done with this," she said to him.

"I'm certain of it," he said. "Unfortunately."

* * *

Rose was kind enough to give him the silent treatment all the way back to the house rather than air dirty laundry in front of half of Torchwood. But once home, she pointed the Doctor to the couch and stood nearby, waiting.

"You tell me everything right now," she said.

"Sit down, Rose. Please."

She paused, then flopped on the opposite side of the couch from him. "Okay?"

"Thank you," he said. He took a deep breath, and told her about the Library.

* * *

Rose was quiet when he finished. Her hands were curled around her knees, no longer gripping at the cushion the way they'd been when the Doctor started.

"Here's the thing, Rose," he said. "She knew my name – my real name, the one I was born with. My name is very powerful. I keep it hidden for a reason. The fewer people who know about it – and that includes you – the safer we are.

"So that's why I said before that things must have been as bad as they could possibly have been for me to tell her my name, and it's also how I know that I must trust her as much as I trust anyone. I'd tell you my name, too, if I had to. I want you to know that. There is no one in this world, not even her, that I would rather be with, and if we were in the kind of situation where I had to tell you my name to save the universe, I would do it without hesitation. You must believe me, Rose."

She exhaled slowly, rubbed her palms on her legs, unwound the coil she'd made of herself. "Yeah," she said. "I do."

"But it's not the only reason I know that I trust her. I had a sort of vision while working on her vortex manipulator. Got some fragments of past mes who must have met her, and some of a future me. Quite a lot of that future me, in fact."

"Really? What do you look like?"

"Older, then younger. Or younger, then older. I'm not sure which."

"Right, that's so helpful."

"Rose," he said, and he reached for her hand. She was at last ready to let him take it. "Rose, I think that future me is married to her."

Rose blinked at him, and her hand fell limp in his. "What?"

"It was hard to tell. I only saw the timelines for a moment, and they were especially tangled there. But I'm reasonably certain she and I are married." He stroked Rose's hand with his thumb, and waited for her to respond to his touch.

Nothing. And despite Rose's order to tell her everything, there were other fragments, much more naked ones, that she certainly didn't need to know about.

"But if I'm married to her, that doesn't mean I've forgotten about you. And that future me, I'm so, so certain that he could not love River now if you hadn't mended a sad, broken, big-eared man who needed you more than he could possibly say."

One of Rose's fingers twitched in his, bending across his palm. She tilted towards him, brushed his cheek with her thumb, and kissed him once, then again, drawing back with a swift tease of her tongue against his lower lip. "You were laying it on a bit thick there for a minute, but I'll take it."

"I lost you at 'big-eared,' didn't I?"

"Yeah, but that's okay. You really did have big ears back then."

He leaned in for another kiss, this one lingering enough for him to have time to wind his fingers in her hair. "So, I'm forgiven?"

"I'm working on it. But you don't ever get to tell me not to talk to someone because you think I'll go all stupid and jealous, yeah? Because if I do, that's my choice, not yours. Okay?"

"Okay," he said, relief pooling through him. "But Rose?"

"Yeah?"

"You _were_ a bit jealous."

"Oh, shut up."

* * *

The next day, the Doctor mended the vortex manipulator's case with a quick-setting resin bonded to alvidium nanomesh he'd pilfered from a heat sink on one of the half-dead spacecraft Torchwood stored near its helipad. The combination was still more fragile than hexayoonium tetraoxide, but stemmed the particle leak enough to render the manipulator usable.

There was still no sign of customisations that would have allowed River to cross the Void. Even the mysterious fastReturnSwitch routine had none of the transform computations he'd expect might thin the barrier between universes; it was simply a switch, as its name suggested, looking for matches to the lengthy strings.

All those repetitive patterns, as if the strings represented items that were nearly, but not exactly, the same. Thirteen items; a baker's dozen, an unlucky number, the ancient regeneration limit ...

Oh.

Of course it was.

Thirteen patterns, all similar, but with variations. Thirteen people, all similar, but with variations at the genetic and temporal level. One of which was him.

fastReturnSwitch was River's fail-safe: a way for the vortex manipulator to seek him out when River called it into action, as she must have before she'd apparated in the Sevens. It still didn't clear up how she'd punched through to Pete's World, but it at least explained why she'd turned up round the corner from his office building.

The rest, it seemed, he was going to have to get directly from her.

* * *

One of Sanjay's black-clad guards delivered River to the Doctor's door. She helped herself to her property bag on his desk, then seated herself opposite him and scanned the room with quick flicks of her eyes, as if she were used to operating on a hair-trigger.

"Bare walls," she said. "Almost as if you're a man who doesn't plan on sticking around."

"I'm not the sort of man who needs motivational kitten posters. Not that there's anything wrong with motivation, or kittens, or motivation involving kittens, though in my experience, kittens aren't the best model for a well-organised and productive workforce. And you, River, are trying to distract me."

"Was I that obvious? I'll have to try harder next time."

"How did you do it? How did you get here?" He thrust the manipulator towards her, then snatched it back when she reached for it. "No. Not yet. Not until you tell me how you did it."

"Why? So you and Rose can go back? If it were that easy, you'd have done it already, even if it meant leaving me behind. Where is Rose, by the way? Shouldn't she be part of this little gathering?"

"She's in a meeting, but she'll be here soon." The Doctor replaced the manipulator on his desk, covered it with his hands, hiding it from River, and from himself. "I don't like mysteries I can't solve, River."

"Oh, sweetie." She sighed. "There's nothing to solve. It was an accident. I was trying to visit some old friends who live among a very tangled set of timelines, and something must have gone wrong."

"An accident. That's all?"

"As if you've never taken any accidental detours. Honestly, if you knew how to fly your ship properly –"

"I flew my ship just fine, thank you very much," he said, his heart tightening. His hands pressed on the vortex manipulator.

"Whatever you say, sweetie." That cocksure smile he remembered so well from the Library, even more frustrating now that he knew her attitude was borne of certainty, not bravado. "Now, if you don't mind, I believe you promised me my vortex manipulator once I told you how I got here."

The Doctor slapped it into her outstretched hand, and she clasped his in return. The memories he'd acquired from the vortex manipulator bubbled at the lowest levels of his brain. Memories of River holding his hand, even though it hadn't happened and would never happen in this body; memories he'd kept back from Rose, because they involved far more than hand-holding.

"You look like you have another question," River said.

"No. No, I don't. I really don't." He dropped back into his chair with a rough exhale of breath. "All right," he said. "Who are you to me, River? Because I saw things in that vortex manipulator. Images of your timeline with me. Things I don't remember even though I should. And don't give me that 'spoilers' nonsense; if I'm stuck here in this universe, what can I possibly do with your secrets?"

"You may not be stuck here forever," she said carefully. "And I say that because I know you, not because I know your future. But I'll give you one answer: when you had that nose and those ears? You alone at the bar, feeling sorry for yourself while Rose and Jack were on the dance floor? Us in that back room, with the handcuffs?" Smoke in her voice curled around each word. "I know it's a night I'll never forget."

He'd only had a second or two with that memory, but it was enough to redden his face. "Yes. That's the one."

River wrapped the manipulator around her wrist and tapped at the keys. "You don't remember because you asked me not to let you remember. Not in so many words, but close enough." She peered down at the display, pressed another button, and left her finger poised over the device. "Now, if you don't mind ..."

Rose swept through the doorway, a little blonde blur aimed straight for River.

"I do mind, thanks for asking," Rose said, grabbing River's bicep. "You and him back then? You tell me –"

River started at the unexpected contact, jarring her wrist. Jarring it right into her finger.

A flash of light starburst through the room, then winked in, and was gone before the Doctor could finish yelling at Rose and River to stop.

And now they were gone, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Rose remembered every detail of her last moments clinging to that lever in Torchwood Tower: the rubber grip of the handle chafing her palm, then slipping away beneath her sweat; the wind and Daleks and Cybermen whipping past her like a metallic storm front; the rush of breath from her body when her stepfather caught her just shy of the wall.

But most of all, she remembered the terror of falling backwards, falling such a long way, and how her brain had filled in what the rest of her days would be like: tumbling and screaming through the vast emptiness of the Void, until oxygen deprivation slowly choked her life from her.

That was travelling by vortex manipulator. Torchwood's interdimensional teleport disks had been a long, slow blink: closing your eyes, yawning, waking in another world. The vortex manipulator was like being ripped out of one dream, dropped into another, being ripped apart again. It was surely only a second or two of pain, but when she and River winked back into reality, she felt that same jarring, breathless fear she'd felt headed towards the wall in Canary Wharf.

And here, as in the London she'd called home, she was falling.

She landed haphazardly, dropping on top of something softer than a rock but harder than a pillow, then rolling sideways off a slope, coming to a rest in dried leaves and dirt. River tumbled afterwards and lay still and silent beside her.

Rose's temples ached. What she wouldn't have given for a paracetamol or something stronger, preferably in a cocktail glass. 

But the woman who'd brought her here still hadn't moved. "River? You okay?" Rose said. "River?" River's eyes were closed, her mouth slack. "River? River, wake up."

Rose leaned in, listening closely: River was still breathing, a good start. No blood on her, and even when Rose carefully slid her hand beneath River's head to check for injury, she found only a small lump. Eyelids lifted: pupils normal-sized, both the same.

Rose sat back on her heels. She and River had fallen from mid-air, which explained both the lump and, Rose reluctantly realised, the not-entirely-squishy surface she herself had landed on: River. Oh, nice work, very nice indeed, her own bulk taking out the only person who might have the faintest clue where they were, and who held a headful of secrets she was dying to know. 

Would the Doctor be able to track them? Torchwood could track almost anyone, and the Doctor wouldn't rest until he found her, that was certain. But Torchwood's first line of inquiry would be tracking Rose's mobile, which she'd discovered out of juice during her meeting when she'd surreptitiously tried to check Twitter underneath the conference table. Maybe the vortex manipulator had left contrails through time and space even a half-Time Lord could see, or maybe if she simply wished hard enough in his direction, he'd pick up her thoughts.

"Or maybe I could stop feeling sorry for myself and see if there's anything like civilisation nearby," she said bitterly, then pushed herself off the ground and straight into something directly over her head.

"Ow. Ow. What the hell –?" Rose raised a hand tentatively above her. Even in the rapidly dimming light sifting through the trees, she could see there was nothing over her head – except that her hands told her otherwise. Cool metal, broad and smooth, a width easily as long as her armspan, length farther still; a sharply curved edge only a few inches high. She traced the edge, noting how the shape tapered to a rounded point at one end, and at the other, was welded to an equally invisible body.

A ship. An invisible ship. And she'd seen invisible ships before, or one in particular.

"Oh, please, please, please ..." Rose found the point where the wing met the side of the craft, and braced herself against both, forcing herself up the side until she was at last sitting on the wing. She patted the air beside her, the arc of the hull revealing itself beneath her fingertips. Somewhere up there, if this were a Chula ship like Jack's, was a hatch that led inside, where there were nanogenes to help River and navigation to take them home if the manipulator couldn't.

Somewhere up there, but impossible to find when one was unacquainted with the topography of an invisible ship. Rose crawled across the hull, feeling along its ridges and valleys for a handle, or even a seam, and found nothing. She was losing what little light she had; better to pause and build a fire for the night, then try again in the morning, when hopefully River would be awake to help.

At least Torchwood had provided mandatory survival training, and the forest provided enough materials for Rose's fire. Fist-sized rocks for a bank; timber to burn; a few leaves for kindling, though a bit of fluff to burn more slowly would be nice ... ah, the trim of River's coat, padded with lambswool and easily picked away with Rose's fingers. River still lay motionless on the ground, not even flinching when Rose opened her coat to get at more loose batting.

Inside the coat, in a pocket close to River's chest, was a book with a blue binding. How thoughtful of River to provide reading material for this evening.

The sun was low on the horizon by now, but mercifully still visible enough to provide solid beams Rose could focus with her hand mirror on the kindling. The fire caught quickly. One worry down, in any case, while the other slumbered beside her.

Rose settled in and opened the book. The inside front cover, a stippled cream cardstock, bore an inscription: _For River, to keep track of our days. We'll meet again – spoilers, I know._

And the words that made her breath catch: _Love, the Doctor._

Not a novel, then. River's diary, which the Doctor had mentioned when he'd told Rose about the Library: "She mentioned a picnic in Asgard. Something about the fall of Byzantium. That's all I remember, because she wouldn't let me look at it. She said that was my rule, and I have to admit, that does sound like my sort of rule."

Somewhere buried in the memories River was unable to discuss were her stories of meeting Rose's first Doctor. And the rule about not reading the diary didn't apply to Rose.

She turned to the first page. _Today, I was supposed to kill the Doctor. Instead, I remade the universe._

* * *

__**Shadow Proclamation holding cell, 53 alpha-sub-Q/22-46**  
Madame Kovarian always said it wasn't really love; it was just my conditioning. I was raised to kill the Doctor, but I loved him, too. How could I not? All those dashing deeds, running in without a plan yet saving the day anyway. The Doctor was a good bad boy, and what girl can resist trying to tame one?

_Old Kovarian was wrong, though. I do love him. I'm old enough now to know the difference between love and obsession. Obsession burns bright, like an ember slowly turning my heart to ash. Love burns slow and warm and forever._

_Mother would laugh at my terrible poetry. Father wouldn't. But they'd both tell me I'm right. Anyway, I've got loads of time to come up with a better analogy; my sentencing's tomorrow, even though I already know it's life in prison._

_I'm sure some people will argue a wedding to a man in a giant Doctor suit isn't valid. But the Doctor made his vows from inside that suit, and I made them, too._

_And then we kissed, and unmade my universe._

Rose flipped the page with trembling fingers, telling herself it was just that she hadn't eaten in hours.

_**Stormcage Prison, 53 alpha-sub-Q/23-1**  
Very cheeky of him to visit me on my first night in prison, considering I'm only there because I'm supposed to have killed him. I punished him appropriately. He loved every minute of it._

Rose closed the book.

* * *

She opened it again five minutes later, when her breathing had slowed down. This time, she skipped ahead, skimming pages to see what drew her attention. She paused at a spread with precise, crosshatched sketches of twelve numbered faces; some she recognised from photos and paintings she'd been shown, and two she recognised from real life. The sharp slope of cheekbone and sleek, cropped hair of the first one she'd fallen for; the pincushion hair and sly grin she woke beside every day now.

Both of them liars. The first, who'd never told her about meeting this woman; the second, who'd told her only reluctantly. He was supposed to be more human now, and he was, in that he'd given himself to her wholeheartedly. But perhaps the crafty habits of a thousand years were harder to break than she'd expected, particularly when they ran smack against the risk of her jealousy.

No. She wasn't going to take the blame for this. He'd known who she was, and accepted her, faults and all. He'd chosen to lie to her, by omission if not deliberately, and though he'd eventually come clean, Rose was certain there was more to know than the little he'd told her.

She kept flipping pages, searching for the fragments of phrases she'd overheard earlier: _You alone at the bar, feeling sorry for yourself while Rose and Jack were on the dance floor? Us in that back room, with the handcuffs?_ There were only so many clubs she'd visited with Jack and her first Doctor, and only so many points in time he'd been separate enough from them then for anything to have happened with River.

Until finally:

 _ **Telamos VII, 55 alpha-sub-N/14-1** Gave myself a week's holiday from Stormcage – you'd think they'd know by now not to assign trainees to guard me – and tracked the Doctor to Club Paradis. Not his usual haunt, I must say, particularly for this melancholy model. I liberated a silver dress from a mannequin that needed it less than I did and took the opportunity to get to know my husband's ninth body –_

Leaves whispered and rustled, and a cold hand gripped Rose's wrist.

"A diary is supposed to be private," River said, "and I don't remember giving you permission to read mine."

* * *

River was remarkably alert for a woman recovering from a blow to the head. She slid her diary from Rose's hands and replaced it in the jacket pocket, then settled cross-legged across from her and watched her with considerably more focus than Rose would have expected under the circumstances.

"You had no right to read that," River said.

"I didn't know what it was when I found it. I was just looking for something to do until you woke up."

"But you didn't stop reading it once you knew what you had."

"No." Rose returned River's glare. "You'd have done the same if you were me."

That got a half-smile. "I would."

"I need to know," Rose said. "Why you? How'd he pick you? Why ..." Her fists dug into her thighs.

"My story with the Doctor is far more than could ever fit in that diary. And does it really matter, Rose? You have him, too."

"I thought I did back then. But I guess I was wrong."

"Just because he and I had a moment in a back room somewhere? That's all that was, Rose; a moment. He didn't know me then. But I'm certain, knowing my Doctor now, that he wanted to know _you._ "

The fire spat a spark at Rose, and she brushed it from her jeans. River was still watching her, as calm as she'd been back in the jail cell, when any other person would have been pacing or panicking.

"You seem fine now for someone who hit their head like that," Rose said.

"I've got a bit of a headache, but I'm a fast healer." River picked up a crisp brown oak leaf and tossed it on the fire. It spun and crackled into dust. "The question is, what did me in? There's nothing big enough here to knock me out."

Rose grinned. "Other than an invisible spaceship?"

"An invisible space–" Even through the haze and smoke of the fire, Rose could see River go pale. "Where? Show me. Show me right now."

"Okay, okay, calm down." Rose got up, turned around with her arm stretched out, and walked forward slowly. "Here. I've got my hand on the wing."

River scrambled to join her, swiftly running her hands along the slope of the wing until she reached the hull. She turned right, continuing to map the ship with her palms, then paused a couple of metres along. She swept her hands in small circles, moving methodically from chest to waist height.

"There we go," she said, leaning into the hull. An arch of dim orange light burst into view, expanding into an ellipse as the ship's entryway tilted forwards until it was a shallow ramp on the ground. "Tarryk?" River called, running up the ramp. "Tarryk, are you in there? It's River! Tarryk, tell me you're okay!"

River had disappeared by the time Rose began to follow her. What little light the ship offered inside seemed to be for emergencies, outlining the doorway, a few side panels, and the windscreen. Larger shapes she couldn't yet identify rose fuzzily before her in purple and navy.

And in front of the windscreen, sitting in a chair while cradling someone slumped over a control panel, was River.

"Tarryk, my sweet," she murmured. "I'm so, so sorry."

Rose hung back near the doorway. No matter how little she trusted River, this was not the point to interrupt her to ask about the ship, or its dead occupant, or even how the vortex manipulator had magically dropped them nearby.

After a few minutes, she heard River call her name. "I know you're there, Rose. It's okay. You can come in. I'm going to need your help moving Tarryk's body anyway."

"Was he a friend of yours?" Rose asked tentatively.

"She," River said. "More than a friend, once. She was doing me a favour flying me to Earth. The place I was trying to go – the vortex manipulator wasn't getting me there from a distance, so we thought trying from nearby might help. She'd saved for years to buy this shuttle. I was her last trip before she started taking on charters."

"I'm sorry."

River stroked Tarryk's hair. "Thank you."

Tarryk's silhouette grew clearer; Rose's eyes were adjusting to the light, or lack thereof. The body looked roughly human-sized, and the jagged edge of a forehead ridge bit into the windscreen light. "What ... what do you think happened?"

"Whatever brought me here must have brought her and the ship, too. If she got as shaken up as I did before I arrived, she probably lost control and crashed. It must have happened too quickly for the safety systems to compensate." River sighed. "She was one of the kindest people I ever knew. Most appalling taste in music, but you can't have everything."

River leaned in to kiss the jagged ridge, then stood up. "Chula tradition requires that we bury the body as soon as possible after death. Will you help me carry her out to the fire? The space where I was sitting looks flat enough for a grave."

"Sure, of course. How do you want to – ?"

River pulled Tarryk up by the armpits. "Take her feet. Once we have her outside, I can do the rest."

Rose nodded. "Okay."

The body was heavier than it looked for a humanoid no taller than River herself. By the light of the fire, Rose could see Tarryk's ridges extended in parallel lines down each side of her gunmetal grey face. She had deep red hair coiled at the side like copper wire. It was the first time Rose had seen a Chula, she realised; twice now she'd seen their ships, but never before their occupants.

River removed a petite blaster from a pouch at her side and blew a perfectly square hole in the ground. Grasping Tarryk by the armpits again, she manoeuvred her into the grave, then aimed the gun again and refilled the hole. The dirt and leaves rose in a low hump above the grave.

That, too, Rose had seen, but not with this person.

"The squareness gun – where'd you get that?"

"I found it on the TARDIS. It's not like the Doctor to keep weapons around, but it's rather useful."

"I think it belonged to a friend," Rose said quietly.

"A friend who's no longer with us either, I take it."

"I used to think so, but I saw him again a while ago. It's just funny that you have that – when I met him, he had an invisible Chula ship, too."

"Funny sort of world," River said.

"Yeah, it is."

River replaced the gun and sat beside the grave, stirring leaves with her fingers. "Chula tradition also says that the family should keep vigil at the grave the night of a burial, so that evil spirits can't possess the body. There are bunks in the shuttle if you want to get some rest, and there's a latrine and a galley if you need anything. But if you don't mind ..."

"No, of course not." Rose crouched beside River and tapped her wrist. "But I want to make sure you'll still be here when I wake up."

A slight smile. "A reasonable request." River unbuckled the vortex manipulator and handed it to Rose. "I'll see you in the morning, then."

"Good night, River."

"Good night, Rose."

* * *

Rose slept fitfully on her bunk, waking periodically at the hooting of owls and the anxious shivering in her brain as she considered what the Doctor was doing. He'd be frantic by now, snapping at Rose's staff while waving them away whenever they tried to help him locate her. Hopefully at first light she and River would be able to work out where they were and how to get back ... assuming they could get back at all. Who knew what River had pressed before Rose had grabbed her wrist? River had said she'd arrived by accident, but what if the accident had boomeranged them back to the real Earth?

The one with the real Doctor, who'd left Rose behind without even saying goodbye.

She stopped sleeping at all after that.

* * *

When she finally rose, sunlight had sneaked into the ship through the doorway and windows, illuminating last night's mysterious shapes: two aisles of plush seats, and storage bins lining the wall. Not unlike a commercial airplane, albeit larger and more invisible. The fabric on the seats sprang back instantly at Rose's touch: new, never even sat upon. Regret stabbed at her, albeit briefly. She knew what it was like to pursue a dream for years, come so close to achieving it, then fall short; but she'd come to terms with her regret long before, and had never fallen short in as permanent and unpleasant a way as Tarryk had.

Outside, smoke swirled around River, who was busy kicking dirt on the smouldering remains of the fire. "Good, you're awake," she said. "I need the vortex manipulator."

Rose reached into the waistband of her trousers and removed the manipulator. "You can get us home with this?"

"Maybe. It depends where we are." River peered at the display, tapping buttons and turning a side dial. "And where we are is northern New Jersey, approximately 100 kilometres from New York City. In your world, in case you're wondering. Damn. I did hope the rebound protocol would work. Apparently not."

"Rebound protocol?"

"Automatic return to point of origin. I suppose it did work, after a fashion; this is about where I activated the vortex manipulator when the accident happened. I was hoping the protocol might re-create the circumstances and send me back to my own universe."

"So, you're stuck in our universe, then. Well, I can tell you all about that."

"I'll bet you can. But with any luck, I won't be here forever." River shook her shoulders, stretched out her arms. "All right, then. We could take this back to Torchwood right now if you like. Or ..."

Rose folded her arms. "Or what?"

There was that dangerous sparkle to River's face again. "Or we could sort out what's wrong with Tarryk's ship and fly back in style."

"No funfair ride through the vortex? I like the sound of that," said Rose. "Hey, do you think the ship's communicator is working? The Doctor's probably going mental wondering where I am."

"You two are so cute. Anyway, I don't know; let's find out."

"We're not _cute,_ " Rose grumbled, tramping through the leaves behind River. "He just worries, is all."

"So does my Doctor," River called over her shoulder, "not that he'll ever admit it."

* * *

River seated herself in Tarryk's chair and spun round to face the console. "All right," she said, "emergency lighting and cloak are still active, so we've still got power in some of the cells. Start with a hard reset, I think. Rose, is there a big red lever on the floor on your side?"

There was, surrounded by the orange glow of importance. "Yes. Should I pull it?"

"Hard as you can."

Rose crouched down and yanked hard on the lever. It stuck halfway up, but she sat, wrapped her arms around it, and pulled again.

The floor rumbled, vibrations shuddering through Rose's calves and thighs. A metallic scrape like drawing a knife against steel; then a series of deep clunks, separated by several seconds at first, then speeding up, then drowned in a roar that dopplered from the front of the ship to the back. The orange light flickered and disappeared entirely when warm white light emerged from recessed fixtures along the ceiling, and a spectrum of readouts appeared on the console.

"That certainly did the trick," said River. "Okay, then. Fuel reading: halfway full, more than enough to get us to London. Engine pressure and temperature: a bit low, but not enough to worry about. Avionics: well, I hope that's normal. My Chula's a bit rusty. Let's see if I can get this bird in the air without attracting too much attention, shall we?"

The shuddering at Rose's feet sped up to a steady hum as River flipped more switches and slid her hands along the console lights, fingers tapping at buttons Rose couldn't read. The hum faded away when the ship rose into the air, hovering above the trees and setting them swaying in its engine's wake.

The shuttle was far calmer in mid-air than pushing off for launch. Even River's swift ascension to 10,000 feet was perfectly smooth, other than Rose's ears popping; in an airplane or zeppelin, she'd have felt every swirling air mass the craft hit, but the Chula ship carved the sky effortlessly.

"There we go," River said. "Autopilot set on a northeast heading; cloak, aircraft detection, and local radar jamming on. We should be in London in about twenty minutes. We could even call ahead to let them know we're coming – do you know Torchwood's galactic contact settings?"

"First thing they made us memorise after they installed the long-range communications array," Rose said. "Where do I enter these numbers?"

River pointed to a virtual keypad. "Press 'talk' when you're ready."

Rose entered the numbers, pausing to double-check them. "Torchwood Tower, this is Agent Rose Tyler. Come in, please."

The speakers crackled, sparks fizzing and popping within.

"Torchwood Tower, come in please. Torchwood Tower. Torchwood Tower. This is Agent Rose Tyler. Come in, please."

Stubborn silence, broken only by an occasional pop and Rose's cursing.

"Maybe we're too far out to connect, even with galactic settings," River said. "I shouldn't think so, but it's a new ship. There could be a software bug."

"Or it's busted from the crash," Rose muttered.

"At least we're in the air, and we'll be in London soon enough. Besides, this gives us that much more time to get to know one another." There was honey in River's voice, almost as if she were flirting. "So, tell me about your Doctor. How's he adjusted to life on Earth?"

"That's your question for me? Really?"

"Call it anthropological curiosity from a professional archaeologist. How does a man completely unequipped for normal human life – normal anything, really – manage to settle down?"

"I call it 'none of your business.'"

River laughed. "You read my diary, sweetie. The least you can do is return the favour."

Rose scowled. But it was either answer River's question, talk about the weather, or sit in silence for another fifteen minutes, and for all she knew, this might be her last chance to get information out of River in return. Sharing cost her nothing.

"You really want to know?"

"I'm not expecting a daily blow-by-blow. I'm just curious. I can't even get mine to spend more than one night in a posh hotel before he gets upset that all the walls are still in the same place."

That sounded familiar. "He was absolute rubbish at it at first," Rose said. "I caught him turning the clock hands randomly so he'd feel like he was time-travelling. And he still disappears on me – goes off on a jaunt somewhere without telling me until he's there or on his way back."

"Don't you hate when he does that? Just because the rest of us have to sleep –"

"Oh, it drives me completely mental. He knows it, too, so he's mostly stopped."

"Mostly?"

"The best you can hope for from any of him, isn't it?"

"Fair point."

"And now," Rose said, settling back in her seat, "it's time for you to answer one of my questions."

"Also fair," River replied. 

"In your diary ... what did you mean when you said you were raised to kill the Doctor?"

"We'll need a much longer flight for that story, Rose."

"I'll take the short version."

"All right," River said. "Stolen from my parents, who didn't even know they were going to have me in the first place. Raised by a religious order convinced the Doctor was going to bring about the end of the universe. As it turns out, they weren't half wrong about that, but not exactly in the way they expected. Sent back to Earth, grew up with my parents, who thought I was their ASBO best friend and not their daughter; met Hitler; tried to kill the Doctor; saved his life anyway. Any other questions?"

"Only about a million of them."

"We're nearly halfway across the Atlantic already. You'll have to narrow it down."

Kidnapping, the end of the universe, growing up with parents who didn't know her ... _Hitler._ It was hard to know where to begin.

"If you saved his life, why were you in prison for killing him?" Instantly, Rose regretted her choice. "This isn't some stupid time-travel reason, is it?"

River laughed, honey-blonde curls corkscrewing across her cheeks. "No, that's not it, for once. He and I both knew no prison could hold me for long."

"Yeah, but ... life. In prison. For something you didn't do. And without even knowing if you'd ever see him again."

"You of all people should know what it's like to have unshakable faith in that man. I knew I would see him then, just as I know I'll see him again now."

"Once you get back to your universe."

"Once I get back."

She turned to face Rose, and when Rose looked at River in return, it wasn't hard to see how the Doctor might have fallen for her. The seductive smile, the overwhelming aura of confidence mixed with more than a hint of scheming trickster; the man had always been in love with himself, and River was that desire made flesh. It was enough to give Rose a few twinges she'd rarely considered before, but which River obviously had, given what she'd said about her relationship with Tarryk.

"Rose, I swear, I didn't come here to steal your Doctor."

"It's just – it's just a lot of coincidence, you know?"

"You really think I want to fight over the Doctor? I have my life with him; you have yours. I'm not interested in stealing him from you or anyone else. What would I even do with two of him anyway?" River turned back towards the console. "Actually, never mind, I've already done that."

Rose stared down at the floor. River's words, the Doctor's words, her own, all simmered in her head: _I have my life with him; you have yours. I can't stand it when women fight over me. You don't ever get to tell me not to talk to someone because you think I'll go all stupid and jealous._ And here she was, as stupid and jealous as before, prying and poking at a woman who could probably teach her things about her own relationship if Rose were only willing to listen.

Rose found the stupid, jealous, black mask covering her heart, crumpled it into a tiny ball, and shoved it into the deepest part of herself, where she could forget it existed.

"I'm sorry, River. I'm really sorry."

River looked over at Rose again, her face softening. "It's all right. I forgive you. I can see how my diary might have given you the impression I can't always be trusted."

"Pretending to kill the Doctor and nearly destroying the universe, yeah, those were pretty big hints."

"You have no idea." River tapped at the controls. "We're less than ten minutes out, if you'd like to try the comm again."

"I would, but first I have another question. Hopefully not an insulting one this time."

"Ask away."

"So," Rose said, "two of him?"

" _Highly_ recommended, if you ever get the chance."

* * *

It didn't matter how often Rose repeated the phrase "Torchwood Tower"; the communicator replied with nothing but static. Rose wiped the sweat from her palms on her jeans, but by the time she replaced her hands on the communicator, they were moist again.

Crossing into England, River slowed the shuttlecraft and descended to a few thousand feet. As usual, clouds obscured most of the countryside, but Rose could still make out squares of farmland and the grey squiggles of tarmac separating the fields.

She tried again. "Torchwood Tower, come in, please."

This time, after the usual buzz of static, there was a response. "This is Torchwood Tower to unknown aircraft. You are entering protected airspace. Please identify yourself."

"Torchwood Tower, this is Agent Rose Tyler. Can you find the Doctor? I need to talk to him."

A long pause. "This is Torchwood Tower to unknown aircraft. We repeat, you are entering protected airspace. Please identify yourself. If you do not identify yourself, we will assume you have hostile intent." 

"That doesn't sound good," said River.

"It's not," Rose replied, an edge in her voice. "New security protocol since the Doctor narked some rogue Sycorax and they came back and took out the Eye. Trust me, we don't want what happens next."

They were rapidly approaching London and the squat, irregular patches of grey that marked houses and businesses; the City was a taller smudge on the horizon.

"This is Torchwood Tower to unknown aircraft. This is your final warning. We will fire upon you unless you identify yourselves within the next ten seconds."

"Definitely not good," River said. "Time to buckle in. Hit the switch up here." She rapped the top of Rose's seat to identify the area she meant, then did the same to her own seat. Five-point restraints emerged from the sides and bottom of the chair and fastened themselves tightly around her.

Rose strapped herself in. One last number to try, if she could stop her hands from shaking. 

"Doctor?" she yelled before he even had a chance to answer. "Doctor, are you there?"

Again, the long pause Rose had heard from the main tower, long enough for the tremor in her palms to shiver its way through the rest of her body. 

"Hello? Who is this? Hello? Hello?"

The Doctor's voice, thin and so far away, as weak as it had been when he'd called to her years before and drawn her to that beach. Only this time, if Rose weren't careful, she'd wind up the ghost, genuinely locked away from the Doctor forever.

"Too late," said River grimly, pointing to a pair of bright white streaks emerging between the rapidly focussing smudge of City skyscrapers and a windscreen message flashing mauve. Rose couldn't read it, but she could guess it wasn't a polite reminder that smoking was not allowed onboard the aircraft. "Hope you've got good aim, Rose, because we're going to need it."

Leaning in to the communicator, as if proximity and desperation could fix mechanical malfunction. "Doctor!" Rose cried. "You have to recall the missiles!"

"Time to go," said River. "Lasers. Those buttons with the red arrows. They'll tell you when you have a lock. Aim and fire."

The white streaks were moving closer. River lowered her altitude, but the streaks continued to track them. 

Rose sucked in a breath and slapped off the communicator. She'd have to trust in River, and in herself. She'd survived the Daleks, the Beast, a hundred other threats worse than a pair of warheads.

And even if she never got to say goodbye to the Doctor, he knew. He always knew.

Rose shifted her attention to the red arrow keys, searching for a lock from the guidance square on the windscreen. Closer ... a few more ticks to the left ... down five taps of her thumb ... 

A terrifying lurch, knocking Rose so far to the right she'd have been on the floor if not for the restraining harness. The horizon flipped perpendicular, and the guidance square zipped about the screen, as confused as Rose was.

"Hang on!" River yelled. The ship arced steeply into the space between the missiles, bucking up and down as they zoomed past.

"Holy – River! What the hell are you doing?"

"Evasive manoeuvres, what does it look like?"

The windscreen message, which had blinked off momentarily, resumed. "Dammit!" River said. "I'm going to try circling behind them. Get ready to fire."

River banked the shuttle upwards into a short, tight loop, driving her and Rose back into their seats as gravity did its work. It was impossible to aim while the ship shifted so rapidly, but Rose left her fingers on the buttons anyway, knowing she'd have little time to react once they emerged behind the missiles.

Two beats to the left. One to the right. She fired.

The explosion blossomed into a fiery cloud, buffeting them like a storm tide just as River had to twist the shuttle yet again to avoid the missile rapidly reversing itself towards them.

A long, creative string of curses from River as the shuttle sputtered in mid-air, its normally glass-smooth motion devolving into hiccups. The City and the Thames suddenly seemed much closer than they had a minute before.

"We're going down! Brace for impact!" River leaned into the console, still trying to right the ship even as the controls stubbornly refused to respond to her fingers. Her left hand gripped the top of the console, knuckles white. 

Rose reached for River's hand and felt fingers as shaky as her own clasp hers in response. 

The Thames rose up to meet them.


	3. Chapter 3

River wasn't usually a light sleeper, but the steady, high-pitched beeping by her side finally roused her. She was lying under a stiff blanket on a similarly stiff bed in a room with artificial lights and nearly bare walls, and somewhere nearby there was a machine that very much needed to be blasted into tiny little pieces.

Twice now in twenty-four hours she'd been knocked unconscious. A new record, even by her dangerous living standards, but at least someone had brought her to hospital this time. She wiggled her toes and fingers, cautiously moved her neck from side to side; good, everything in working order, albeit somewhat sore.

She'd managed to save herself and Rose from complete disaster, she remembered that much. Diving towards the Thames; pulling back on the throttle to both slow the ship and bring up its nose; skittering across the water's surface until they'd slid onto the gritty bank of the river. The rubber scent of the airbag deploying from her seat restraints and cushioning her at first impact; the groaning of the ship as it wedged its way onshore. Small wonder her biceps and calves ached from effort and impact, but not so much that she couldn't reach for the monitor cable and yank it out of the wall so hard the plug shot up and smacked her on the back of her hand.

But the beeping stopped. That was something.

A minute later, a nurse with a Torchwood logo on her breast pocket tore into the room, pulled the monitor aside, shook her head, and reached for the cable.

"If you plug that back in," River said, "I'm afraid I'll have to strangle you with the cord."

Suspicion and confusion clouded the nurse's face. River had seen that so many times before: people trying to assess if this sweet-voiced, attractive woman were capable of fulfilling her threats, and usually discovering the hard way that she could. The nurse, however, began moving plug towards socket.

"Really," River continued, her hand now on the nurse's bicep, "I knew three ways to kill a man silently before I was six years old. Imagine how many ways I know how to do it now."

She smiled, sweet and sincere. The nurse dropped the cable, muttered "Fine, bitch," under her breath, and departed.

Blessed silence at last. River ripped the monitor leads off her chest, tossed them to the floor, and settled back in to sleep.

* * *

This time when she woke, the Doctor was sitting beside her.

"Nice of you to join us again," he said.

"As if I could keep away from you – especially when you did such a marvellous job fixing my vortex manipulator."

"I can only fix what I've got. Replicating accidents is something else entirely. And by the way, was it really necessary to threaten that nurse?"

"She was going to make that thing start beeping at me again," River said, inclining her head towards the monitor. "You'd have done it too if you'd heard it."

"Maybe so."

"How's Rose? Is she okay?"

The Doctor blinked at her. "Yes – yes, she's fine, being kept overnight for observation, just like you. It's standard Torchwood procedure."

"Don't act so surprised. We were starting to make friends, you know."

"Friends? You and Rose?"

"I always get along terrifically well with your companions. Rose and I had a few bumps, but I think we've established the necessary ground rules. I can see why you like her. She's full of fire, that one."

"Yes. Fire. Among other things." He got out of his chair. "Anyway, I wanted to thank you for bringing her back in one piece."

"It was the least I could do. Besides, we had a nice little chat about you on the way back, you naughty boy."

"I ... what? What did Rose say –"

The door creaked. "That's between us girls," Rose said, entering the room. "How are you doing, River?"

"Very well, considering I just crash-landed a spacecraft." River shifted to sit up in bed, and gingerly swung her legs over the side. "The Doctor tells me you're all right, too."

"The Doctor," he said, "is wondering what on earth you're doing out of bed, Rose."

"I told you, I'm perfectly fine. River's one hell of a pilot, and I have to hand it to the Chula – they know how to build their safety equipment." Rose draped herself on the Doctor's arm and looked up at him. "Are you ready to go? I am. And can we pick up a pizza or fish and chips on the way home? I'm starving."

"Rose Tyler, are you suggesting that we ignore Torchwood hospitalisation protocols? I love it when you break the rules."

"If she isn't, I am," River said. She stood up, stalked over to a narrow cabinet near the door, and opened it, looking for her clothes and possessions and pleased to discover that everything was there, including the squareness gun and vortex manipulator. "Just give me a moment to change out of this hospital gown."

The Doctor reddened and turned his back to her. "River," he said, "I suppose we need to find you somewhere to stay while we work on getting you back home."

"No need. I can take care of myself."

"Come with us," Rose said. "You can stay in the guest room."

Even without being able to see the Doctor's face, River knew his expression: jaw slack, eyes round. His head twitched towards Rose.

"That all right with you, Doctor?" Rose asked.

"Um. Yes, yes, of course."

"Good, that's sorted. You ready to go, River?"

River settled the vortex manipulator on her wrist. It blinked the current space-time coordinates at her, blithely persisting to function as if it hadn't been the source of a massive dimensional rip barely a day and a half before. Well, she'd show it. Somehow.

"Ready," River said. "And in case you're wondering, I like mushrooms on my pizza."

* * *

__**Parallel London, 23 March 2011**  
Will I ever share this entry with you, Doctor? I'm here in your home, with its clean sheets and rooms that stay exactly in one place, and I wonder how you survive. It must be the human in you, because I know you, my love, and you'd never have lasted a year and a half in one place and one time. Not even with Rose. Not even with me.

_I must find my way back to you somehow, because your metacrisis knew me, and I knew that look in his eye: why he didn't want me to meet Rose. We must have quite an encounter, me and your tenth self. What on earth do we do together?_

_I have the usual ideas, of course, but who knows if we'll have the time._

_You do, I suppose._

* * *

The aroma of fresh tea and toast lured River to the kitchen the next morning. The Doctor and Rose were seated across from each other at a butcher's block table, Rose calmly chewing on wheat toast with chocolate spread, the Doctor sipping tea while scrolling through an article on his tablet.

"Good, you're up," he said. "Plenty of tea left in the pot if you'd like some. Help yourself to toast as well."

Pepper and loam scents wafted from the teapot. Ceylon, if River wasn't mistaken; a solid, normal breakfast blend for what looked like a solid, normal young couple, if one weren't a human from another dimension and the other a half-Time Lord sprouted from a hand. Then again, River supposed that to anyone who didn't know her and the Doctor, they probably seemed like an ordinary couple as well, at least until he opened his mouth.

River seated herself at the end of the table and spread her toast with marmalade. If her hosts were going to play domestic, so could she.

"So," the Doctor said, "we still have to sort out how to get you home. I want you to tell me everything about the accident that brought you here."

"I was trying to get to New York City," River began. "In my universe ... it's blocked to time travellers between 1938-1995. I can't tell you why; just trust me that it's very hard to get in, although I've done it before. This time, the vortex manipulator wouldn't let me through from a distance, so I thought if I got closer, I might make it. My friend Tarryk flew me nearby, I tried the jump ... and then I wound up here."

"And your manipulator was leaking chronon particles when you arrived."

"Apparently. I'd no idea until you told me."

He pushed his chair out from the table, leaned back in it, and stared straight up. "And you ended up here – because I was here, and your fail-safe was looking for any one of me – but your friend and her ship crash-landed outside New York."

"Yes."

"It's almost like you both bounced off New York – like you'd hit a force field, but only one of you had a string pulling you back in our direction."

River swallowed her tea. Tarryk had hated the stuff, said it smelled of leaf rot. "Why not just chew on a log?" she'd always said. "You'd get more fibre that way anyway."

"Only one of us, yes," River replied. "Unfortunately."

"I think," said the Doctor, still staring at the ceiling, "I think, I think, I think ..." Abruptly, his head jerked forward, and he switched his focus to River. "Imagine the leak from your vortex manipulator was a bit of gravel. And imagine that what's surrounding your New York is a car windscreen. The gravel hits the screen at normal speed" – he tapped River's nose, and both she and Rose smiled – "and nothing. The glass goes on protecting your car. But when the gravel hits when you're going 125 kilometres an hour –"

This time, his finger flew so fast towards River's face that if she'd been anyone else, she might have been left with a bruise on her cheek. But she was River Song, and she grabbed the Doctor's wrist in mid-air with his finger a centimetre away from her nose.

"Nice," said Rose.

"Thank you, dear." River let go of the Doctor's wrist.

"As I was saying," he continued, "when a piece of gravel hits you at top speed, you end up with a nick in your windscreen, and eventually a cobweb fracture, and finally, the whole screen goes if you're not careful. And what I think, River Song, is that your tiny piece of gravel hit something already fractured, by you or some other time traveller trying to break in, and opened up a dimensional rift. Maybe just a temporary one, but enough to send you and your friend through to us."

A million-to-one accident; of course it had been, because everything about her was always a million-to-one. But at least she could usually beat those odds, or go down fighting. River wrapped her hands around her cup of tea. It stopped them from shaking.

"So to get me home, we need a windscreen like New York," she said. "Somewhere with overlapping timelines. There can't be many of them here – if they exist, surely you must know where they are."

"They don't exist, River. Not in this world. I'd know about them. Up here." He tapped the side of his head. "Half a Time Lord brain is more than enough to sense that kind of chaos."

"All right," said Rose, "can we make them instead? River's got the vortex manipulator – maybe take it apart long enough to make the timelines, then put it back together?"

"It's not that simple, Rose. Even if we could, we'd need to amplify it somehow. We might not need something as big as New York, but at best, the vortex manipulator would give us ... I don't know, a village pub in the middle of the Cotswolds."

"So we need something much bigger than what River's got on her wrist."

"That's what I just said."

"Something that could punch through time and dimensions on its own."

"Yes." He sighed. "I'll have to build something. I just hope I can find the parts. It could take weeks. Months, even."

"Yeah, it could," Rose said with a shrug and a smile, "or I could just go get the dimension cannon out of Mum's attic."

"You could _what?_ "

"I might have sort of kept it ... in case I needed it ..." Her next words stumbled over each other in a rush. "He just left us here, and everything was so weird with us at first, and I swear, I forgot all about it until now –"

River considered how much better her tea and toast would taste in another room, preferably one on the opposite side of the house from the kitchen. "I think the two of you should negotiate the details here, so if you don't mind ..."

The kitchen was silent when she left it, but she was certain it wouldn't be for long.

* * *

By the time the Doctor knocked on River's door, breakfast was long gone, and River was deep into a world history book's chapter on mid-century advances in zeppelin safety. "Come in," she said. The emergence of literal social stratification could wait.

"I thought you should know Rose has gone to get the cannon. I'll know more once I can examine it for myself, but I believe if we can disrupt its containment fields, assuming whoever built it was intelligent enough to contain something as dangerous as that cannon, though mind you if they'd had the intelligence God gave a mouldy cabbage they'd have never have built something that unbelievably dangerous in the first place, anyway, all we have to do is bombard it with your leaky chronon stream, and that ought to open a nice little rift in time and space that with any luck will seal itself shut after you instead of developing into a full-bore black hole and swallowing England, Great Britain, and the rest of the Earth. Do you mind if I sit down? No? Good."

He slumped next to River on the edge of the futon couch and cradled his chin in his hands. He let out a small and weary sigh, barely a puff of breath, but River had heard that same sigh from his other selves many times, usually just before a short and bewildered rant about the mysteries of human nature.

"You know," the Doctor continued, "I was so happy she found me on Earth I never told her how angry I was she'd tried. She'd never have got through at all if Davros hadn't weakened things, but she risked exploding two universes. And now I find out she'd have done it again to get back to the other me, if she and I hadn't sorted out our differences."

"It's a good thing you did, then. For all of our sakes."

"Yes, except now I have a new problem to sort out. Which is whether there's a way for more than one person to get through that little dimensional accident of yours."

"Rose can't still want to go back. She loves you. Believe me, she made that perfectly clear to me."

A wry smile flashed across his face. "I'm sure she did. And you two seem to have come to an understanding."

"I'd like to think she trusts me now. After all, she left me here alone with you."

"Or me here alone with you," he said, turning to look at her, calm and focussed.

But it didn't escape River that his eyes flicked towards her lips, and stayed there for more than a moment.

Carefully, River lay her hand across the Doctor's. He'd touched her reluctantly in his office, only enough to pass the vortex manipulator back to her, but now he wove his fingers between hers. 

"Would you go back, then, if you could? You and Rose?" River said.

"I don't know. Everything I want is here now."

"For a man who's been lying as long as you have, sometimes you're really rubbish at it. You, in one place and time for the rest of your life? And the TARDIS in another universe?"

"I can't very well steal her from him, River, and travelling with him ... I don't think that's a good idea."

"But you haven't given up on her, have you?" she said softly.

"It's a dangerous hope, River. And I'm usually all in favour of hope, best thing there is, but not when it keeps wearing at me like this."

His hand trembled beneath hers, and River leaned over, stroked the side of his neck with curled fingers. When she kissed his cheek, he stiffened at first, then relaxed with another one of those nearly nonexistent sighs.

She drew him close and spoke softly. "If I've learned one thing from travelling with you, my love, it's that you never give up hope, not even when it wears at you. Because someday, somehow, you always find a way to make it come true."

* * *

The dimension cannon was more of a snubnosed titanium cylinder bristling with bodged-together wiring and circuitry and less of anything that could be plausibly called a cannon unless one was a scientist trying to justify a Torchwood research budget. Rose had set the cannon up on its tripod in the lounge, where the Doctor fussed over the machine, muttering as he ran his fingers along its breadboards, and dissolving into sputters when he found wires joined to a board with duct tape instead of solder.

"I think he's going to need some time alone with that," Rose said to River. "Fancy a shopping trip? You can't wear those clothes forever."

"What a lovely idea," River said, noting the Doctor's slow blink and slack jaw. "A nice, long trip, don't you think?"

As they slipped through the front door, Rose's hand pressing lightly at River's back, an anguished howl wafted along behind them.

"That'll be the short fuse for the dimensional phase regulator," Rose said, and indeed, as they closed the door, the last wail River heard was "Who shorts a fuse for a dimensional phase regulator? Imbeciles. Idiotic, suicidal, colossal imbeciles."

"Or him," said River.

Rose shushed her with a giggle, and motioned her to the car.

* * *

__**Parallel London, 28 March 2011**  
With any luck, this is my last entry in Parallel London. The Doctor says he's nearly sorted out the dimension cannon. He's even figured out how to re-create my vortex manipulator's chronon leak on demand. You always were so clever, my love.

_But he hasn't been clever enough to find a way through for himself and Rose. If he had other vortex manipulators, he could do it, but the elements he needs to build them don't exist on Earth._

_I wish you could see him. Maybe you could blast open a little hole to this universe, just a tiny one no one but him would ever notice, and send him the parts he needs. Because half-human or not, he's still got your eyes, and I can see the sadness when he talks about the life he used to have._

* * *

It was nearly midnight. The dust sheet beneath the dimension cannon was littered with oil spills, de-threaded screws, and jagged copper wire, but the cannon itself gleamed. The Doctor carefully slotted the last circuit board in place, flipping plastic brackets on either side to hold it steady.

"There we go! All cleaned up and ready to blast you into another dimension, River."

River peered inside the open cylinder. Each wire was neatly coiled, each capacitor properly wrapped, each fuse safely seated. The interior workings made a convincing masquerade of a machine lovingly and carefully built to precision engineering standards, rather than the rickety and desperate mechanics the Doctor was now holding together with materials only slightly more reliable than the duct tape originally linking the patchwork electrics.

"You've never built something this tidy in all your life," River said. "Are you sure you're the Doctor?"

"Donna's habit, not mine. Well, mine now, I suppose. It's for the best. Now I can actually find things when I look for them."

It almost seemed a pity to destroy something they'd just spent days restoring, but River's skin itched with the need to for her own universe. It wasn't even that this one was so different, zeppelins and American prime ministers aside; it was the maddening open-ended reliance on others for clean clothes, a bed to sleep in, her morning tea. If there had been no way back, or no way of knowing there was a way back, she could have parked herself at the nearest university or museum and begged for a job, or even simply hired herself out as security. She could have found her own way, eventually, as she always had, with or without the man she'd learned to love.

Dependency had always been always difficult for her to accept. She'd been forced into it as a child and spent years escaping it; even in Stormcage, waiting for guards to deliver her meals and messages, she'd taken her leave whenever she pleased, just to remind them she could.

Yet here in this house in London, she'd accepted their offers of help, certain that if anyone could return her to where she belonged, it would be the Doctor, and the woman who'd risked two universes herself to find him again. River had landed in this world unkindly, and lost a friend. But she'd gained two more.

Rose, slouched on the sofa, yawned and stretched. "Are we all set for tomorrow?" she asked.

"We've got the proving grounds all day, but we shouldn't need more than one shot," the Doctor replied. "We'd better not, anyway. We've only got the one."

"Good. In that case, I'm going up to bed, and you're coming with me." She rose and wiggled her fingers towards the Doctor's hand, and he let her tug him to her. "Did you want to ..." Shy, a light blush, head tilted as she spoke to him.

"Did I want to ... oh! Yes. That. I thought you might – I suppose it might be better if I ..."

"One of us is going to have to."

"If you don't start using some nouns," River said, "I'm going to have to develop my own theories about what you're talking about." She paused, tapping her fingers on the cannon. "Oh, my. Those are some very nice theories."

Rose laughed, blush deepening, and laid her head on the Doctor's shoulder. "Funny you should say that," she said.

"See, we're about to go to bed," the Doctor said. "And we've been wondering whether you'd like to join us."

"And I thought you weren't going to give me a going-away gift," River said. "I do love a surprise."

The Doctor extended his other hand to her. "Come along, then, and let's find out what it is."

* * *

It was hard to know where to start: a Doctor River had never had before, or the companion she was equally drawn to. This Doctor was uncharacteristically warm against her body, a woollen blanket instead of a cotton sheet, but his hands were as skilled as those of every other incarnation, wrapping themselves to her curves, drawing her chin up for a kiss.

Rose nestled beside her, lightly stroking River's breast, nipping gently at her neck. When River turned to kiss her, she bent into the embrace, letting River shift alongside and above her. Rose's mouth opened: a sighing breath as River's lips skimmed along Rose's jawbone, lingering at her throat. River's tongue twirled around one of Rose's nipples, sealed her lips over it, Rose's quickening heartbeat thudding in her ears. Rose first, she decided, even if the Doctor was steadily hardening behind her, rubbing himself against River's arse while his nimble hands explored the rest of her body.

She brushed her fingers along Rose's parted thighs, back and forth, edging ever closer to the apex while Rose wriggled beside her, short pants of breath evolving into chuckles as River kept up the teasing. "I should have known," Rose said. "You're as bad as he is."

That sparked laughter from behind River, and she curled into it, enjoying the way the Doctor gradually kissed his way up the arc of her neck. "You're lucky there's nothing to handcuff you to," she murmured, her hand still dancing across Rose's thighs. "You'd be amazed how long I can keep this up."

"I'd better not be." Rose sighed, arching into River's touch.

The Doctor shifted, and River heard the sound of a drawer opening. His arm dropped back over her, palm extended to reveal a small blue silicone egg. "Try this," he said. "She makes the most astonishing noises when I use it."

River rolled the egg in her hand, thumbing a depression on one side of it. The egg buzzed and skittered across her skin. "How promising," she said. "Let's take it for a test drive."

She let the egg rest between Rose's legs, and Rose gasped for air.

" _Very_ promising," River said, and pressed harder.

Rose's lower body jerked upwards, and she grabbed tight to River's shoulder. River rocked the egg forwards, slipping a finger inside Rose while the heel of her hand kept pressure on the egg. Earlier, she'd heard Rose's heart; now, kissing Rose's breastbone, the tender skin that swelled beside it, Rose's moans vibrated on River's lips, stronger as River bent her finger within.

Behind River, the Doctor's thrusts became more urgent, the nips at her neck now more like bites. She sighed and groaned when he drew his tongue across a bite she knew would show in the morning, and as his cock slipped from the crack of her arse to between her legs.

"River," he murmured.

The head of his cock nudged her clit, and she trembled. "Yes," she said. "Now. Please."

He drew her leg over his, adjusted his position, and pushed inside her, breath stuttering as he started to move.

It was harder to maintain a rhythm now. Rose, rapidly coming undone beneath silicone and River's fingers. The Doctor's own motions, set to a different beat building slowly within River. His hand, pinned to her breast, thumb and forefinger pinching a nipple; his lips warming her throat; Rose's voice rising as she clutched River's waist.

And beneath, the knowledge that this was one more experience out of time for River, a stream unique to this universe, and one she might not ever be able to share with her own Doctor. Who was to say he'd never make it here on his own someday, and if he did, would it be before she'd arrived? Millennia after, when this Doctor and Rose were nothing but dust?

She'd long since learned to enjoy life in the moment with him, because for her every moment – well, most moments, in any case – occurred just once, no different than for any other human, even if she was slightly more than that.

She suspected Rose and this Doctor had learned that lesson as well.

This moment, now, it belonged to the three of them, and no one else; a moment with the Doctor that River's Doctor could never know. She would seal it away in her diary, and in her mind, and perhaps on a lonely night, revisit it herself.

Especially this: Rose's sharp cries, her eyes squeezed shut, her head drawn back against the pillow in a puff of blonde hair. The Doctor's fingers wrapping around Rose's hand on River's waist, his thumb brushing both women as Rose shuddered through her orgasm. The warmth that steadily rose within River as the Doctor continued to move.

She couldn't capture all of this in her diary. But her memory would be more than enough.

Rose, calming, took River's hand from between her legs, raised it to her lips to take the still-vibrating egg and kiss River's fingertips. "Close your eyes," she said.

River obeyed. And the egg fluttered down her body: buzzing at the hollow of her throat, across her nipples, tracing the soft underside of her breasts, circling her navel; lines of electricity jolting at the crease where thighs met torso, and finally, finally caressing the sensitive point between her legs. River's cry mirrored Rose's own from minutes before. The warmth that had been inching through her suddenly spiked heat throughout her body, a burst of energy rippling through her like waves.

Rose left the egg in place at first, driving the rumble of aftershocks, then slid the egg farther down, where River could just feel it at the point where the Doctor's cock slipped in and out of her. Her back was slick with sweat from his exertion; his single heart beat rapidly against her skin.

His hand shook, but was still strong enough to tilt her head towards him so that he could kiss her. And as she opened her mouth to him, her tongue teasing his lips, he moaned and shivered and pulsed within her.

Rose withdrew the egg and thumbed it off. She snuggled closer to River, reaching over her to kiss the Doctor herself, then dropping back beside her, arm slung across them both.

The vibrations in River's body had slowed by now. Instead there was just one lover behind her, and another in front of her, and the tingle in her skin wherever they touched. She wondered if they expected her to get up, go to the guest room, tuck herself into her futon, leaving the two of them to their bed and their life.

But instead they lay their heads upon her, and she left her eyelids closed, and drifted to sleep between them.

* * *

The dimension cannon and its tripod loomed spike-legged above the beige rocks and dust at the centre of the quarry. The Doctor had set up a remote detonation system he could trigger from within the concrete blast bunker so that they wouldn't be hit by shrapnel or the pressure wave when the cannon finally blew. "We'll still catch the timestream bubble, of course," he'd said. "But that's less likely to put an eye out. Well, except maybe for you, River, but let's hope it doesn't come to that."

River sat on the edge of the seismograph table and double-checked the vortex manipulator's destination. The Doctor had twitched when she'd sat there; she'd raised an eyebrow at him, but he'd looked away, pretending not to notice her.

June 26, 1958. Twenty years since her parents had been zapped back in time; their wedding anniversary, assuming the vortex manipulator's bit of gravel could burrow its way through the dimension cannon's windscreen. Enough of a cushion that if she missed the date by a few days, or even a few years, her parents would be alive and well in New York.

She still made sure her fail-safe was set. Just in case.

Rose was pacing near the door, opening and closing the logbook, shuffling about looking for something to do while the Doctor sonicked minute, invisible adjustments on the remote control. "You're sure this is safe?" she asked.

"As safe as a controlled spatio-temporal explosion bombarded with stray chronon particles can be," he said. "Which is to say: everything's going to be perfectly fine."

"Liar," River said.

"Yes, but I do it with style." He flipped the remote in midair, caught it, then placed it on the desk, patting it. "All set with that. Now, for your vortex manipulator."

River dutifully held out her wrist, and the Doctor pointed the sonic at it. He frowned, then activated the sonic again. "That's done it. Ready whenever you are, River."

"I need a moment," she said, and grabbed him by the collar, pulling him down for a hard kiss. He caught on quickly, hands burying themselves in her hair, lips parting for her tongue.

She let him go several breathless seconds later, and he stumbled backwards, dazed and blinking.

"Your turn, Rose," River said, and Rose joined her at the table, leaning in for her own kiss, moaning softly into River's mouth.

Only after Rose withdrew did River wink at them and say, "Okay. Now I'm ready."

"Here we go, then," said the Doctor, pressing a button on the remote and eyeing a tiny digital display on the device. "Timestream explosion in thirty-four seconds, give or take."

River hopped off the table and placed her finger beside the manipulator's activation button. One touch, and she'd either be flying home or flying into tiny pieces. "You're sure you can't come with me?"

"We're sure," the Doctor said. "But ... you never know, do you? I hear a Chula shuttlecraft crash-landed in London the other day. Might be able to repair it. See the stars again someday. Maybe even your stars."

"You," she said, smiling. "You amazing man."

"Don't thank me. Thank the amazing woman who suggested it." He stretched out his hand, and Rose took it without even looking.

River laughed. "Of course."

"Seven seconds now, River," the Doctor said. "Get ready. Five. Four. Three. Two –"

"I know how it ends, sweetie," River said, and activated the vortex manipulator.

* * *

The nice thing about popping into existence two feet off the ground in broad daylight in Manhattan was that it was New York City, and as long as River's appearance didn't block progress on the sidewalk, the natives wouldn't notice or care. She landed with a thump on an elephant-ear hosta, which at least provided more of a cushion than the thorny barberry ringing the shade garden in front of a narrow brownstone.

"I should have asked him to fix the altitude meter," River grumbled, rubbing her backside. But wonky calibration aside, the manipulator had done its job: June 26, 1958, 3:18pm, Greenwich Village, a three-story home with a broad terra-cotta pot of scarlet begonias by the front door and windows flanked by turquoise paisley curtains.

River stumbled out of the hosta, rearranging its bruised leaves as best she could, and checked the nameplate by the garden entrance to the house. _A. & R. Williams._ Good.

She knelt by the begonias, sliding her fingers along the upturned rim of the planter's saucer. At the very back, a magnet and a key, the occupants' own fail-safe for poor memory or unexpected visitors familiar with the owners' security habits.

The lock to the house stuck for a moment, then gave way after River took a deep breath and tried again, worn wood creaking as the door swung open.

"Mother? Father?" River called. "I'm home."


End file.
